


Maintenance

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Augmentations, Chronic Pain, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, OR IS IT, augs are not a stretch in the canon, twenty headcanons in a trench coat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25246402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Roy has a need and comes to Tenacity. Tenacity has a need also, and Roy provides.
Relationships: Roy/Tenacity Williams
Kudos: 3





	Maintenance

Roy knows how to stretch out money, food, water, even though years after leaving the Source he still has only vague understanding of what is and isn’t expensive, what is and isn’t an appropriate price for something. For him, almost everything is expensive. He prefers bartering, being paid in things he can use, rather than money. But all that knowledge doesn’t prevent him from occasionally going completely penniless yet needing something urgently.

At least this time he’s in Shadowlair, and there’s always some work to be found. He could even go to Charity, as he often does,—but his urgency is coupled with a sense of... Not shame, exactly, yet a combating feeling of it being not that urgent, not that important, even frivolous. Rationally, he knows his need to be real: his boots are falling apart, and even though he could go to a cobbler, they would most likely suggest he try to get new boots because repairs could only go so far. Yet something in him, a small voice, keeps repeating that it doesn’t matter. Many people can afford only cheap footwear, if any at all, why should he strive for something better? Despite that he often encounters out-of-city terrain and his footwear must be able to sustain much abuse; despite that, rationally, he knows that with cheap boots he would overpay because he’d have to repair and change them more frequently than good ones and it would add up... He knows all that. He’s been hungry for days, and he needs some work, and it’s merciless summer which would be barely bearable if he holes up in his usual hideout in the Sands...

He knows all that. He wishes that tiny voice didn’t pop up now and again. Yes, other people have a need also. It doesn’t mean that Roy’s own is insignificant.

So he goes to Charity but doesn’t tell her the truth, asking about the news. She says that Tenacity is in Shadowlair also.

Tenacity might have a well-paying contract.

Roy knows several places where he might find Tenacity staying: there is that fancy and very empty house in Tierville, to which Tenacity gave him a key ages ago but which Roy rarely visits; a couple of safe houses; a neat flat in a more respectable part of the Sands.

Roy goes to that flat.

The building isn’t overly nice, the paint on the metal door is peeling, but the stairwell is relatively clean and well-lit, the lift in working condition. There is a mirror in it, for some reason—there wasn’t before, and so Roy’s own reflection catches him unawares. The face in the mirror is alien ever so slightly, as it always is. His stubble is dusted with sand, and there is a smear of dirt on his forehead. He probably smells.

If his former mentors saw him like this...

He turns away.

He steps out of the lift, pulls out the keys, opens the door quietly—and has giant paws immediately on his shoulders, a hundred kilos leaning almost entirely on him. Temperance huffs into his face, licks across his nose. Roy can’t help chuckling. ‘Missed you, too.’ He pats Temperance’s side, and the hounds huffs another gust of hot air then backs away, and his claws tok-tok over the various flooring surfaces as he, no doubt, goes to Tenacity to tell him the news.

The surge of warmth brought by Temperance’s greeting fades. Roy shifts on the doormat, wondering whether he’d be allowed to stay and so should take off his boots and his jacket, or he’s unwelcome and must leave.

Tenacity comes from the farthest room. His hair is strangely shaggy, his beard unkempt, but it doesn’t look like he’s come out of a fight or even from the outside. He is wearing an old shirt with half of sleeves torn off, edges left frayed—the shirt that is only for being at home. Maybe he’s recently from a tedious hunt? But one of the first things he would have done is getting nice and handsome. ‘Roy? Come on in. Or are you only—’

‘Sure.’ He turns around, remembering to close the door, then takes off his boots, the reason why he’s here. Or... Maybe not. ‘Do you mind if I...’ He waves in the direction of the washroom.

‘I never mind. I was about to have lunch, wanna join?’

‘Yes. If you... Yes.’ He takes off his jacket and pads to the washroom, picks a towel and hangs it over the mirror. A quick look around doesn’t reveal any blood, but there is Tenacity’s shaving kit on the sink. He doesn’t usually leave it like that. Roy moves to pack it up, but then thinks otherwise.

He takes a quick shower, water running gritty with sand and pink with dust. He uses a soap that smells faintly of lemon. Only when he shuts the water off does he realise that he has nothing clean to change into, but when he gets up, debating whether to stay half-dressed or to put on his upper shirt and jacket—the undershirt and the one over it are in need of a wash—he sees a plain red tunic on the stand where there wasn’t anything before.

He’s too wound up to notice anything around himself. It might cost him a life. The life of someone near him. He must pay attention.

He puts it on. It is soft, almost silent as he moves in it. Would be a pity to cover it with layers of his own much plainer shirts, so he doesn’t. He takes a glance in the mirror when he takes the towel off of it. He doesn’t look Sitting-presentable, but at least he doesn’t resemble a desert raider. Maybe a raider on a shore leave.

The aroma of fried potatoes and tomatoes pulls him to the kitchen. The small table is already set for two, and there is a plate piled high with draniki, with two bowls of tomato sauce to the side. There are six samosas, cheerfully golden, on another plate, and a breakfast roll, and half a fresh baguette. Roy’s stomach growls.

He catches Tenacity’s smirk. ‘Tuck in. Sorry it’s not much.’

He sits down, breaks the baguette, leaving Tenacity’s favourite crustiest part by Tenacity’s plate, then piles his own with draniki. ‘This is enough for a small band. Were you waiting for someone?’

‘Just... Got a bit overboard with food, is all.’

Roy pauses, cutting a dranik with a fork, then looks over the table again. This is all street food, probably enough for a couple of days. And Tenacity likes cooking. It’s one of those important things which seem to mark the line between hunting and not-hunting. The slower the cooking, the better.

Maybe he didn’t have the time? Just like he didn’t have the time to trim his beard... No, it doesn’t add up. However, it isn’t Roy’s place to question any of that.

Temperance whines, and Roy breaks a samosa—apples inside—and feeds it to him.

‘Ranny, that’s your forth!’ Tenacity grumbles.

The hound chitters after licking his muzzle clean, and goes to lie in the corner, the very embodiment of being properly chastised. Roy doesn’t even doubt that this wouldn’t be the last samosa Temperance has.

Sending another forkful into his mouth, he twists to look at what is taking Tenacity so long—in time to see him lift a full kettle and almost drop it onto its base with a quiet curse.

The parts merge into one tune: the shaggy appearance, the street food, the shirt with torn-off sleeves—the absence of familiar routines.

‘Tenacity, it’s the shoulder?’

‘It’s nothing. _Fuck_.’ Tenacity drops his right hand, gripping his arm with the left.

Roy licks his lips, puts down the fork, then moves from a chair onto the small corner bench. ‘Come here.’ He does hope Tenacity would, because otherwise...

Tenacity sighs—quietly. ‘It’s just pain.’

So it’s one of _those_ days. Not overworked, not a lack of maintenance or exercise—just pain. In Tenacity’s leading arm, the shoulder, making everyday tasks either tedious or entirely impossible.

Roy folds a leg under himself, moves a chair closer, in front of himself. ‘Temperance, bring the kit, please?’ He looks up, catches the gaze of grey-blue eyes. Tenacity’s brows are knitted—in pain? annoyance? Roy can’t tell. But he says: ‘I’d like to help.’

Tenacity sighs again and straddles the chair, his back to Roy. ‘Don’t want to be doped up on painkillers, is all,’ he says, sounding as though he apologises. ‘Not that they work...’

Roy doesn’t remind him that he’s not at a hunt, that he can afford to be unfocused for a while if it relieves the dull, heavy ache, that Temperance would protect him should something or someone happen...

He just takes a small black kit out of Temperance’s jaws. The hound lowers his head on Tenacity’s thigh then, looking up. Tenacity pats him lightly. ‘I’ll be fine, buddy. No need to worry.’

Which is usually the time to get really worried.

Roy hooks his fingers over collar of Tenacity’s shirt, then carefully peels it off of him. Thankfully, Tenacity doesn’t button it, as is his habit.

As is Roy’s habit, he admires Tenacity’s augs.

The black shoulder blade, the shoulder itself, are covered in red designs—not just printed, but engraved. They glow under UV light, Roy knows. He also knows that these designs are similar to the tattoos covering Tenacity’s thighs, although he never asked about that. The pattern is on the outside and inside of the plates and bits, where almost nobody would ever see—they are less for show and more for Tenacity himself.

Even without touching Roy can tell that Tenacity is in pain: the muscles around the artificial shoulder are too tense. Roy rubs his fingers together, sending Fluid coursing through them in a short loop to warm them up, then presses them slowly into the muscles.

Tenacity jerks, then groans.

Roy resists the urge to yank his fingers off before he understands what’s happening. ‘Bad?’

‘Good,’ Tenacity rasps. ‘Go on.’

He works his way diligently around the shoulder, using his fingers, his palm, the edge of his hand, his thumbs. Tenacity hangs his head, and Roy has to resist the urge to kiss his nape. As he works, he starts diving deeper, trying to figure out what’s happening. Tenacity’s breathing becomes louder in his ears, his elevated heart rate almost distracting. Roy focuses on tension and pain—only in the organic parts for now.

He hums—sings in a way that should be too low for Tenacity to hear, although Temperance lifts his head a little, looking at Roy with interest. Tenacity hushes him, telling him in a quiet voice to let Roy work.

Roy sings to Tenacity’s body. It’s a type of pain Roy can’t do much about, aside from radically working on Tenacity and rewiring many things—which Roy would never try to attempt without having a lengthy talk with Tenacity first. But that talk would mean telling him everything. Roy can try to calculate the outcome, but he’s too afraid to find out it is more likely that it would be the end of everything, so he doesn’t look into that possibility.

For now, he works on what he can, and in a way he can just barely disguise so that no questions had to be asked.

Tenacity is melting into the back of the chair, the area around the aug warm and dark with the rush of blood. Again Roy has to suppress the urge to kiss him. ‘Try not to fall asleep,’ he warns.

‘Mm, this feels so good...’ Tenacity rumbles in reply.

Well, so much for that.

He keeps his right palm pressed to Tenacity’s body—shouldn’t leave him without contact—and reaches with his left to the kit, opening the lid and taking a small mag driver.

He connect the driver to the pivotal points and slides aside the cover plate. ‘Turn off your HUD, please.’ The inner plating and piping is as beautiful as the outside, each part made to order and adorned, unique, although the whole piece, just like all of Tenacity’s augs, is designed in a way that minor, routine repairs can be done with parts found easily from commercial, widespread vendors if need be. But the custom nature of all of the hunter’s augs means, as a trade-off for untraceability and hack-proofing, serious trouble if something is damaged in a substantial way. Regular clinics wouldn’t be able to know how to repair it, or even how to remove anything without causing even more damage.

Roy isn’t a clinician. Not a repair worker, not an engineer—he sings. To the circuitry, flowing with signals, making no distinction between organic nerves and their artificial counterparts; he sings to the nanotubes, fixing their alignment, reminding them how best to replicate—but not quite—the minute shifts in muscle tension; he goes through the code, smoothing its rhythms, eliminating traces of errors that have started accumulating. It wouldn’t rid Tenacity of pain entirely, but it would make it a certainty that he recovers quickly, that no collapse happens to him in the nearest future out of the blue.

Roy pulls back gradually, finding his way by Tenacity’s much slower heartbeat, his breathing, to the physical sensation of skin and carved plates.

He opens his eyes. He wishes he could do this maintenance not only on this single part—it isn’t very useful to do just one thing in a whole of things—but this would have to be enough. ‘Looks fine,’ he says, keeping his voice quiet.

‘Mm, just pain. Told you,’ Tenacity replies, his words a bit slurred, relaxed. ‘Your hands feel good. Thanks.’

He slides the plate back to its place and locks it—but doesn’t remove his hands from Tenacity.

‘Majesty?’

He runs his fingers through Tenacity’s mane. ‘You need a brush. I’ll help you later with that, if you want.’

He moves away—but Tenacity catches his hand and kisses his knuckles. ‘Thank you.’

Roy curls his fingers. ‘You’re welcome. Let’s eat now.’ He packs the kit and moves it onto a shelf over the bench. Maybe he will find it in himself to suggest more maintenance. To work on ensuring Tenacity doesn’t suffer too much. ‘Do you have any contract now?’

Tenacity runs a hand over his augmented shoulder, then reaches for the shirt and throws it over himself. ‘Not at the moment.’ He glances at Roy, then down, rubbing idly under Temperance’s jaw. ‘Are you staying, Roy?’

He does need a contract, and something usually comes up sooner than later. And Tenacity needs help. And…

He wants to stay, if only for a while. ‘Yes. I am.’


End file.
